This tutorial will teach you how to create frames for your photos in Adobe Photoshop.  I like to keep mine really simple, but once you learn the technique you can experiment and add your own personal touches such as more layers, or wood finishes.  The process is really quite simple, and if you want you can save it as an action so that Photoshop will add the frame for you automatically.

1.  The first step to preparing your image for the photo frame is to figure out what size image you want.  When I post my images on the web I usually keep the longest edge less than 640 pixels.  Now I actually happen to know I want a frame of 40 pixels so I'm going to resize my image to a height of 600 pixels.

Note:  I know many people will just add the frame and than resize down to the size they want.  I do not recommend this as after resizing I always add some USM to the image, and their is no point to do that to the frame or your signature. 

2.  Now that I have my image resized, I like to add a bit of Sharpening to it.  Recently I have started using the Smart Sharpen tool in Photoshop CS2, as I find it makes my workflow easier.  The USM tool I now reserve for Local Contrast Enhancement.  This keeps me from having to adjust my USM tool back and forth for the two similar but different techniques.

3.  Here's where the frame really begins. What we are going to do is actually increase our canvas size.  Our photo doesn't change; it just adds a little more room to our canvas. So go to Image > Canvas Size.

Now follow the settings in the below picture.  Having relative checked is very important as that tells Photoshop to add pixels relative to what you already have.  I choose a size of 30 because that's what I had in mind when starting this tutorial.

3b. The reason for this step is to allow you more flexibility when working with your frame if you want something more complicated.  Because I want the first border around my frame to be white, I created a new layer below my photo layer (click on  the layer with your photo, press ctrl and click the new layer button) and filled it with white (if white is already your foreground color just press alt + del). Now if you want to add any effects or change the color of this area you can easily manipulate this layer.

4.  The frame already looks very nice in framing my image.  But I want to add just a little more to make it really stand out.  So I'm going to increase my canvas size again.  You'll notice this time I used a setting of 10 pixels and black as my colour.

4b. Ok.  I'm gong to do the same as last time.  Create a new layer underneath the white layer we created in step 3b.  It's very important that this layer is somewhere beneath the white layer.  I'm going to fill mine with black.

5.  The frame is actually pretty nice looking at this point, but I want to add a little bit of a bevel at this point.  So I actually just want the black part of my frame.  Select the layer with the black frame on it.  Than while holding the ctrl button click on the white layer.  You should see a dotted border around the inside of the black frame.  Press delete to get rid of the black parts underneath the white area as we won't need it.  

At this point your 3 layers should look like this.  One image layer, the white frame below it, and the cut out black one on the bottom.

6.  Now go into the layer properties (I like to double click on the black layer) and go to Bevel and Emboss.  You can play around with the settings, but for the look I wanted you can see the settings I used.  Another option at this point is just to click on the different default Photoshop layer styles.  There might be one you like.

Your done!  It's actually not too hard to do.  I would suggest you play around with the settings to find a frame that suits you.  If you always want to use the same frame than you can save it as an action so that photoshop will do it for you.  To do that just start all over again.  But before step one.  Click on the create new action button.  And when your done click on the stop button.  From now on you just have to play the action to create your frame.

My Final result.  I added a small signature file in the bottom corner.  This is a very simple white and black matte frame which is fairly elegant, and simple.  It doesn't ditract from the image and helps draw your attention to your photo!

I'd love to hear back from you if you used this tutorial.